By Anote Ajeluorou (from Port Harcourt)
The 5th edition of Garden
City Literary Festival (GCLF) 2012 organised by Rainbow Book Club had the
promotion of women and women issues, especially from the literary point of view
and their impact on society, as its main focus. With ‘Women in Literature’ as
its general theme, this year’s festival gave women writers and critics of
feminine issues long-sought sparing opportunity to re-examine some contentious
issues in men and women relationships, especially those of equal rights that
have continued to dodge both sexes for ages.
On Day Five of the festival, the topic ‘Women and love in
African literature’ came up for discussion, which held at the Banquet Hall of
Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt. With foremost literary critic and university
teacher, Prof. Charles Nnolim as lead discussant, the stage was set for an
explosive engagement. Nnolim also brought with him a baggage of witticism to
bear on his submissions. Others on the panel were Prof. Julie Okoh, Dr. Julie
Umukoro and Mrs. Sophia Obi, with Mazi Uzo moderating.
While giving a general overview of the subject matter,
Nnolim noted that the word ‘love’ is the most abused word in the English
language, saying its application could sometimes be absurd, like saying, ‘I
love you’ (to a woman); ‘I love my mum’; I live yam’; I love my pet’ and so on.
For the classical Greeks, Nnolim said ‘love’ had three broad meanings: ‘Agape’
– love of God or divine love’; ‘Philos’ (philosophy) – love of knowledge and
‘Eros’ – romantic love or the love between man and woman. Nnolim also traced
the history of romantic love in ancient Greece and Western literature, taking
into account Paris’ abduction of Helen that caused the infamous Trojan War that
lasted 10 years with disastrous consequences for the Greeks and Troy.
In the same vein, Nnolim said fantasy, illusory and romantic
love from the West became the stuff Onitsha Market Literature was made of,
which he said is un-African, saying, “In Onitsha Market or Pamphlet Literature,
love is mainly sexual, forgetting that sexuality is not love, for one can
engage in sex without love”.
Nnolim concluded that romantic love in Western literature is
equated with madness as it acts without reason and often in extremes. However,
the erudite critic stated that love in African literature, and indeed, love in
African setting is usually regulated “by a set of life’s realities and
practicalities such as taboo, mythology, polygamy, high bride price, ethnicity,
the caste system” among others.
He also noted, “Love in African tradition is always meant to
end in marriage and procreation. And in the marriage, many factors control
excesses or fantasies about love such as co-wife jealousies, childlessness, the
abiku or ogbanje children for those who are fecund, bearing only
daughters in a son-hungry society, plus the caste system”.
He cited such works as Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (mythology), Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine (mythology), Onuora Nzekwu’s Wande of Noble Wood (mythology), Mariama Ba’s So Long A Letter (polygamy and male philandering), Isidore Okpewho’s The
Victims (co-wife jealousy), John
Munonye’s Obi (childlessness),
Chkwuemeka Ike’s Toads for Super
(ethnic origin) and Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (caste system) as examples. He, however, noted that
Africa’s educated women usually find it problematic to fit into African concept
of love, as they are imbued with European-type love that is romanticized and
glamourized, saying this usually brings conflicts in marriage, especially in
polygamy, where the man is not responding with equal zeal.
Nnolim concluded his submission thus, “While love in
European literature is idealized, romanticized and depicted as ‘tragic
madness’, love in the Nigerian, nay African soil, is more practical, more
pragmatic and less chivalric; it’s more cautious, more mundane, more
earth-bound, more rational and less glamourized because it is controlled and
stabilized by its fundamental unique existence”.
FOR Prof. Okoh, a dramatist
and gender activist, there was a need to look at the causes of love ending
disastrously in African literature, and queried, “Are the men giving love back
to women the same way women give them? If men love or return women’s love, will
the world not be peaceful? It’s the same pattern of unrequited love recurring;
women are crying so that men and women can live happily. For women writers, men
should slow down and live together happily”.
Okoh further argued that polygamy was no longer necessary in
the 21st century and wondered why African men still held on to it. She noted
that the conditions that favoured polygamy in previous ages like economic needs
that required many hands for the farms were no longer in existence, saying the
economic system had changed to that of machinery and automation.
But Umukoro, another gender expert, took a completely
different position, one that could alarm many women, when she affirmed that
polygamy needed not be discounted yet as many ills in Africa society were
associated with its discontinuance as a socially regulating mechanism. Although
she is not in a polygamous relationship, Umukoro further contended that
condemning everything African just so as to embrace European or Western ideas
was wrong. She, therefore, sued for a re-examination of polygamy as a socially
regulating concept for social behavior, noting that so long a set of codes for
its application could be devised, it was all right to encourage it. She further
said modern-day Africans were not practicing monogamy either, with many married
men now having many concubines in place of polygamy.
Umukoro stated, “I look at issues from a global perspective.
We should be talking about African ideology, things that set us apart. Polygamy
is African; there are codes attached to it; then the Europeans came to dilute
it. In those days, there were ethics, dignity, code of conduct to control
polygamy, which, when violated, attracted sanctions. I say to you, we are not
practicing monogamy either; monogamy will leave many women in the lurch,
without husbands.
“We should find out how our forefathers practiced polygamy,
why it worked for them. Most men who claim to be monogamists practice polygamy;
they still keep women outside, a situation that makes the wife back home
miserable as a result. But if you control polygamy, and marshal out how it’s
practiced, there will be no infidelity, which could bring diseases to the
family, like HIV/AIDS”.
But Okoh countered by saying that polygamy isn’t exclusively
African practice, as other societies had also practiced it. She, however,
reaffirmed that time had overtaken the concept of polygamy and that it was no
longer in vogue because of modernity.
Obi contended that while love is a universal thing, African
women felt they have been subdued by the men who see them as domestic hands.
Moreover, a woman protesting such injustice is usually seen as a deviant. She
wondered aloud, “who set up the standards that encouraged polygamy in the first
place? Did the women like it? Were they all right with it? These are the issues
we must examine for healthy relationships to thrive”.
WHILE making further
intervention, Nnolim said the squabble over equality was sometimes laughable as
patriarchy was important and has come to be accepted worldwide. He noted that
no matter how much of a feminist a woman was, she would still bear a man’s
name, as she could not be called, ‘Juliana Agnes’, for instance. He, however,
said the world was tending towards a new theory called ‘accommodationism’ for
the promotion of love and unity within the family, whether monogamy or
polygamy.
He stressed that until the African man began to see the
woman as co-equal, there might be no peace in the home, especially these days
when women have stepped outdoors and were beginning to venture into areas
traditionally the preserve of men. He also stated that city life exercised a
constraint on polygamy, as the means to accommodate many women unlike in the
villages where a small hut was enough to house everybody.
For Nnolim also, the weapon the world has given women is
education, and advised that women should get more and more educated so men
would not look down on them.
But Umukoro still maintained her stance in allowing people
of different persuasions to stick to what works for them. She said as much as
women were against discrimination and support parity, certain social forces
should not be discounted like polygamy, which she stated was deep-rooted in
African consciousness, saying that incursion of foreign religions has
complicated things for the African man.
She summed up, “There are ethics governing society, whether
for Christians, Muslims or animists or traditional religions”, and that one set
of ethics should not “be used to unseat another; we Africans are eclectic. Our
society has not given us a way forward. Christians marry one wife but the men
have side-kicks outside. A lot of things have been diluted. A woman must have a
say in things that concern her life”.
Umukoro cautioned against a myopic view of issues and
advised that since religion was now playing a major role in love relationships,
ethics within a given religion should be allowed to govern such relationships.
Feminine expert and literary critic, Prof. Chinyere Opara
contended that “our society today is as confused as it is sexist”, saying
polygeny (one woman marrying more than one husband, as currently practiced in
some Western societies) was another way of looking at issues. She, however,
argued that ‘feme terrible’, as
recorded in Madam Bovary, where
the woman becomes the tormentor of the man, was another way of looking at men
and women’s relationships.
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